Tag Archives: missouri

I am not an Ozarker by birth. I was actually born in the West, grew up in the Deep South, and spent 10 years or so roving about the Rocky Mountains of Western Montana and other points beyond. I love them all. But when the day came that I first laid my eyes upon the rocky and rolling hills and hollers of the Ozarks, something deep in my bones told me I was home.

No matter how one chooses to look at it, farming can have an impact on the quality of our water. Like a network of blood vessels, capillaries, and arteries found in the human body, the Ozarks are riddled with craggy veins that carry surface water deep down into the earth through the highly-fractured slabs of limestone beneath our feet – and sometimes, back out again. Everything that touches the ground on the surface – including soil, rocks, debris, chemicals, manure, fertilizers and even acid rain – will eventually find its way into our creeks, rivers and springs, and ultimately our aquifers and our water wells.

June lays claim to the longest day of the year and the most violent thunderstorms, it is the month of bluebird babies, spindly-spotted fawns and box turtle crossings. Although we have been expecting another hot and dry summer, we suddenly find ourselves wearing warm flannels and digging the blankets out of the closet. But the rain and a long cool spring is exactly what we – and our garden – were hoping for.

Recently I was leafing through a bunch of old pictures that I had taken of our first Ozarks farm and the surrounding countryside. I was admiring my favorite shots – those of deep rolling hills and meandering rivers and clear blue springs. These are the things that speak so clearly to love of this place – the thing that keeps my feet from wandering too far away for too long.

If someone had told me when I was younger that I would actually enjoy being awake before dawn, I would have laughed. But over the years I have developed the habit of waking up with the sun. And since we turned the clocks forward in anticipation of the Spring Equinox on March 20th, I’ve been up just in time to witness the rising sun as it paints the eastern sky with watercolor shades of pink and yellow; everything looks so new and fresh in the muted light of dawn and life is just beginning to stir in the dark recesses of the woods.

Radon is a colorless, odorless and radioactive gas caused by the natural breakdown of rocks and soils that contain uranium and radium. Radon is also the second leading cause of lung cancer, immediately behind smoking. Cooler temperatures make winter a good time to test your home for harmful radon gas, according to Bob Schultheis, natural resource engineering specialist with University of Missouri Extension.

One of the things I love about living the Ozarks is discovering places of exquisite natural beauty. Over millions of years this entire region was submerged in the warm shallow seas of the Paleozoic era before being uplifted by tectonic and volcanic forces. This cycle repeated itself many times over the course of thousands of years, carving out the hills and hollers we call the Ozark Mountains. Over the course of time, many of the plants and animals that once lived here became little more than geologic memories etched into stone. Yet, a few remnants of ancient wetlands still exist within the relatively dry and rocky Ozark highlands. They are known as Tupelo Gum Pond and Cupola Pond.